New Paper

A paper published in Science
finds summer Arctic Sea Ice extent during the Holocene Thermal Maximum
8,000 years ago was "less than half of the record low 2007 level." The
paper finds a "general
buildup of sea ice from ~ 6,000 years before the present" which reached a
maximum during the Little Ice Age and "attained its present (year 2000)
extent at 4,000 years before the present"

Geoff, the arctic temperature remains at near zero while the ice is melting, the energy taken up by the melting ice. this is not as goddard believes evidence of little melting because temps are low, one cam photo is not the arctic.

the winter temperatures are getting very high any of the data sets will confirm a massive melt season this year,

Don't forget the ice-age scare of the 1970's. Steven Goddard has had many posts, complements of the IPCC and the Nimbus satellites, which clearly shows Arctic ice "skyrocketing" from the 1974 lows to the 1979 highs. Conveniently lying by omission the warmistas start the conversation with, "Since the start of the climate satellite era in 1979...blah, blah, blah."http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/actually-neurotic-little-weenies-dont-have-the-right-stuff/

Not for the faint hearted, but a while ago, I trawled through the IPCCreport that mentioned the Nimbus satellites and saved some bits andpieces.It takes ages to download the report. Here's the bits and pieces.http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf

Pg2247.8.2 Sea-ice Extent and Thickness.......Sea-ice conditions are now reported regularly in marinesynoptic observations, as well as by special reconnaissanceflights, and coastal radar. Especially importantly, satelliteobservations have been used to map sea-ice extentroutinely since the early 1970s. The American Navy JointIce Center has produced weekly charts which have beendigitised by NOAA. These data are summarized in Figure7.20 which is based on analyses carried out on a 1° latitudex 2.5° longitude grid. Sea-ice is defined to be present whenits concentration exceeds 10% (Ropelewski, 1983). Sinceabout 1976 the areal extent of sea-ice in the NorthernHemisphere has varied about a constant climatologicallevel but in 1972-1975 sea-ice extent was significantly less.In the Southern Hemisphere since about 1981, sea-iceextent has also varied about a constant level. Between 1973and 1980 there were periods of several years whenSouthern Hemisphere sea-ice extent was either appreciablymore than or less than that typical in the 1980s.

7. Observed Climate Variation and ChangePg 225Gloersen and Campbell (1988) have analysed theScanning Multi-channel (dual polarization) MicrowaveRadiometer data from the Nimbus 7 satellite from 19781987 They find little change in total global ice area but asignificant decrease of open water within the ice Theirtime series is short, and it is uncertain whether the decreaseis realSea-ice thickness is an important parameter but it ismuch more difficult to measure than sea-ice extent Theheat flux from the underlying ocean into the atmospheredepends on sea-ice thickness Trends in thickness over theArctic Ocean as a whole could be a sensitive indicator ofglobal warming The only practical method of makingextensive measurements is by upward-looking sonar fromsubmarines Apart from a very recent deployment ofmoorings, data gathering has been carried out on voyagesby military submarines In the past repeated tracks carriedout in summer have either found no change in meanthickness (Wadhams 1989) or variations that can beascribed to interannual variability in summer ice limits andice concentration (McLaren 1989) Recently however,Wadhams (1990) found a 15% or larger decrease in meansea-ice thickness between October 1976 and May 1987over a large region north of Greenland. Lack of acontinuous set of observations makes it impossible toassess whether the change is part of a long term trend. Inthe Antarctic no measurements of thickness variabilityexist and so far only one geographically extensive set ofsea-ice thickness data is available (Wadhams et al 1987)

Pg 222-2237.7 Sub-Surface Ocean Temperature and SalinityVariationsThe sub-surface ocean data base is now just becomingsufficient for climate change studies in the North Atlanticand North Pacific basins to be carried out. A few, long,local time series of sub-surface measurements exist,sufficient to alert the scientific community to emergingevidence of decadal scale temperature variability in theAtlantic Ocean. Beginning about 1968, a fresh, cold watermass with its origins in the Arctic Ocean appears to havecirculated around the sub-Arctic gyre of the North AtlanticOcean This event has been described by Dickson et al(1988) as the Great Salinity Anomaly Some of this cold,fresh water penetrated to the deep waters of the NorthAtlantic (Brewer et al, 1983) The marked cool anomaliesin the North Atlantic SST shown in Figure 7.13 for 1967-76 partly reflect this eventRecently, Levitus (1989a, b, c d) has carried out a majorstudy of changes of sub-surface temperature and salinity ofthe North Atlantic Ocean between 1955-59 and 1970-741955-59 was near the end of a very warm period of NorthAtlantic surface waters, but by 1970-74 the subsequentcool period was well developed (Figure 7.13) Cooler waterextended from near the sea surface to 1400m depth in thesubtropical gyre O0-50°N) Beneath the subtropical gyre, awarming occurred between the two periods North of thisgyre there was an increase in the temperature and salinity)of the western sub arctic gyre The density changesassociated with these changes in temperature and salinityindicate that the transport of the Gulf Stream may havedecreased between the two periods. Temperature differencefields along 24.5°N and 36.5°N presented by Roemmichand Wunsch (1984) based on data gathered during 1981and the late 1950s, are consistent with these ideas

Pg 2257.8.3 Land Ice (Mountain Glaciers)Measurements of glacial ice volume and mass balance aremore informative about climatic change than those of theextent of glacial ice, but they are considerably scarcer. Icevolume can be determined from transects of bedrock andice surface elevation using airborne radio-echo soundingmeasurements Mass balance studies performed bymeasuring winter accumulation and summer ablation areslow and approximate, though widely used Section 9discusses changes in the Greenland and Antarctic ice-capsso attention is confined here to mountain glaciersA substantial, but not continuous, recession of mountainglaciers has taken place almost everywhere since the latterhalf of the nineteenth century (Grove, 1988) Thisconclusion is based on a combination of mass balanceanalyses and changes in glacial terminus positions, mostlythe latter The recession is shown in Figure 7 2, evidencefor glacial retreat is found in the Alps, ScandinaviaIceland, the Canadian Rockies, Alaska, Central Asia, theHimalayas, on the Equator, in tropical South America, NewGuinea, New Zealand, Patagonia, the sub Antarctic islandsand the Antarctic Peninsula (Grove 1988) The rate ofrecession appears to have been generally largest betweenabout 1920 and 1960.

Pg 233Conclusions.....Natural climate variations have occurred since the end ofthe last glaciation The Little Ice Age in particularinvoked global climate changes of comparable magnitudeto the warming of the last century It is possible that someof the warming since the nineteenth century may reflect thecessation of Little Ice Age conditions The rather rapidchanges in global temperature seen around 1920 -1940 arevery likely to have had a mainly natural origin. Thus abetter understanding of past variations is essential if we areto estimate reliably the extent to which the warming overthe last century, and future warming, is the result of anincrease of greenhouse gases

Sea Level RisePg 2639.3 Has Sea Level Been Rising Over the Last 100Years?It is highly likely that global-mean sea level (MSL) hasbeen rising This is the general conclusion of no fewer than13 studies of MSL change over various periods during thelast 100 years (Table 9 1) The estimates range from about0 5mm/yr to 3 Omm/yr, with most lying in the range 1 0-2 Omm/yr

Bill The IPCC AR4 2007 gives us the science up to early 2006, it has moved on from there

Re Julienne Stroeve

WUWT Comments, one of a few

Julienne Stroeve says:August 27, 2012 at 9:48 amAnthony I think you are missing a key point, it doesn’t matter too much what the weather does anymore. Whether you have persistent unusually high pressure over the Beaufort coupled with low pressure over Eurasia such as in 2007, or this summer that didn’t have as favorable weather as in 2007, but had an early August storm, the ice cover continues to be anomalously low in summer. The ice is thinner than it was 20-50 years ago, so that it melts out more easily in summer.